Ph.D., Northwestern University (1981). Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Senior consultant to the White-House initiated State Failure Task Force. Holder of visiting appointments as PIOOM Fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Conflicts, University of Leiden (1993), at Uppsala University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research (1996–97). Appointed Strassler Family Distinguished Visiting Professor of Genocide Studies at Clark University (2003).

Publications include: Genocide and Human Rights: International Legal and Political Issues (1984) and, with T. R. Gurr, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (1994). She has also written more than forty articles, chapters, and monographs on the international and comparative dimensions of massive human rights violations. Much of her work explores the relationship between ethnic conflict and political mass murder (politicide), and analyzes how to respond to and constrain intra-national aggression.